Officers Richard Halford and Shawn Smiley were helping to search for a missing boy when their chopper went down near the intersection of Martin Luther King and Hamilton E. Holmes drives Saturday night.

A witness who works at a Family Dollar nearby says it looked like the helicopter was in distress moments before the crash.

"I happened to look to the left and I saw them flying very low and apparently that's when they hit our power lines because right after that our lights went off and our power surges like popped," said Yasheka Green. "I was telling my employees that something is not right. And they were like 'Maybe they were looking for someone,' and I was like 'Not flying that low.'"

"They were so low that I could see two guys in that chopper," she said. "I know that it wasn't right for it to be going all crazy, and he was trying to get it back up in the air and he couldn't, and he went down nose first."